Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Loss or lack of bodily strength; weakness; debility.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In pathology, debility; want of strength. Also astheny.
- n. [capitalized] In zoology, a genus of insects.
Wiktionary
- n. medicine weakness; loss of strength
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) Want or loss of strength; debility; diminution of the vital forces.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an abnormal loss of strength
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek ἀσθένεια (asthénia), from ἀσθενής (asthenḗs, "sick, weak"), from ἀ- (a, "not, un-") + σθένος (thénos, "strength"). (Wiktionary)
- New Latin, from Greek astheneia, from asthenēs, weak : a-, without; see a-1 + sthenos, strength. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“GUILLAIN-BARRE syndrome, asthenia, headache, sleepiness and pericardial effusion were reported as other important medical event.”
The Huffington Post: Shelley Ross: What the Tea Party -- and Everyone Else -- Missed on Gardasil®
“One day post vaccination the patient developed asthenia, headache and sleepiness which improved the following day.”
The Huffington Post: Shelley Ross: What the Tea Party -- and Everyone Else -- Missed on Gardasil®
“He died at the age of thirty-two from “asthenia from pneumonia,” probably as a secondary result of sickle cell disease.”
“You -- you kind of worry that some measure of diffidence, or lack of interest, sets in, you know, kind of political asthenia.”
“Evaluation of the efficacy of a standardized ginseng extract in patients with psychophysical asthenia and neurological disorders.”
“The patient died four years after manifesting symptoms of a general asthenia.”
“He assumed that the interaction between the excitability with which the body was endowed and the stimuli, external and internal, which it encountered during life determined health and the contrasting conditions of asthenia and sthenia.”
“Where we meet with atonic conditions however, with debility, malnutrition, want of energy or general asthenia of an obscure nature, and amenable to electric influence, the tonic effects of the baths become striking and brilliant.”
“In others there was no change whatever, and in a few there was an absolute diminution in frequency; this last I believe however to be a therapeutic rather than physiological effect, manifesting itself only where there is pneumogastric asthenia, and attributable directly to electric stimulation of this nerve.”
“Lieut. Greely's disease is called by the surgeon asthenia, a diminution of the vital forces.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘asthenia’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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250 Spelling Words
A selected sampling of words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
orecchiette, rhabdomancy, guayabera, orthoepy, opisthenar, maguey, proem, ciabatta, cioppino, banns, concinnity, asthenia and 237 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Greg's List
precarious, transient, evanescence, impermanence, fugacity, transitoriness, volatility, caducity, span, interregnum, effervescent, mine and 63 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, A
abaculus, abacus, abaft, abarticular, abbreviate, abeyance, abiding, anthocyanin, antemeridian, arcane, adjure, adduce and 418 more...
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summer words 2009
how many words can I make mine this summer?
largess, hoyden, catholic, fornicatress, quean, slattern, bildungsroman, sybaritic, descresent, nodus, frittle, callipygian and 529 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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beatricks's Words
tremendous, naiad, thrush, samsara, thronging, nascent, broom, aristeia, streak, susurrant, reverberate, resistentialism and 352 more...
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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random
words I read but don't know
nascent, proxy, desultory, charlatan, churlish, emaciated, gaudy, shill, lurid, frisson, marauding, plunder and 610 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3248 more...
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Cagastric Words
I do love medical history, and medical words, especially the obscure ones, but also some that are just plain fun.
cagastric, caprizant, dree, cacatory, aporrhoea, cataplasm, cicatrix, cicatrizant, surgation, theriac, vulnerary, sthenic and 41 more...
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Interesting Words
crepuscular, myriad, serendipity, brouhaha, taupe, mushroom, vignette, babylon, frumpy, miasma, ornery, arraign and 19 more...
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lessons from Der Zauberberg
Words I found when reading "Der Zauberberg" by Thomas Mann (in swedish).
moribund, sine pecunia, placet expiriri, quietism, vatermörder, idiosyncrasy, otium, Eulenspiegel, asthenia, roué, dodecatemory, fulminant and 19 more...
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perhapsolutely's Words
polyradiculoneuro..., abulia, abubble, abscission, abaft, zareba, abatis, abigail, abiogenesis, ablate, ablaut, abo and 1705 more...
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Weakness
Words meaning weakness
debilitation, debility, languor, infirmity, atony, decrepitude, adynamia, adynamy, asthenia, astheny
Tweets
Looking for tweets for asthenia.
chained_bear "'Strychnin sic in large doses hypodermically had a distinct value in the existing asthenia....'"
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 358 Feb 17, 2009